


your father pulled the teeth out of your face

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Child Neglect, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fate, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Neglect, hohenheim meddles and it's good he did good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 02:56:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17890196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: Hohenheim meets a four-year-old Riza, and then a seven-year-old Roy. What will he make of them? [Please read the notes before reading the fic.]





	1. things are better

**Author's Note:**

> this fic contains descriptions of child abuse, namely neglect. please don’t read if this content may be in any way triggering or unsettling for you. that being said, if you do read, be mindful. what i’ve described here are telltale signs of child neglect.
> 
> on a lighter note, i don't know where the idea for this fic came from. i've always wanted to write about the content, and i wanted to do it from either Riza's POV or another adult's. Hohenheim worked out well

**I.**

**things are better**

The Hawkeye house was nine miles from the train station. Van Hohenheim would have to take a car from the station to the town, and then he would be required to make a stop for pastries. Mrs. Hawkeye liked them sweetened with blueberries, if Hohenheim was remembering her right, and Mr. Hawkeye, well… He was never one to enjoy a sweet pastry over savory, and so Hohenheim would be a good guest and retrieve two small pork pies for his old study partner, although Hohenheim would eat one on the way.

The eastern region was all sprawling fields and skies, green reaching up into blue. The people here were modestly dressed and almost always a little dirty, their cheeks smudged with detritus from the field plows. Clothes were ripped and frayed — Hohenheim spotted a few knees and armpits on his way — and drained of all their color. Townsfolk spoke with a lazy country drawl. They said “naf” instead of “knife,” and “whale” instead of “well.” Hohenheim tended to find that charming, though Mr. Hawkeye had once told him that to find anyone’s dialect charming was to be incredibly condescending. So Hohenheim dutifully refrained from telling the woman who ran the bakery that her pronunciation of “faaav cenz” was quite cute.

Hohenheim gripped his bag of pastries in one hand — sweet and savory sectioned off from one another with pretty white pieces of parchment paper — and ate at his pork pie with the other. His stomach rumbled and mouth watered even as the wind swept the smell of manure into his nostrils, overtaking the salty, savory flavor of the pork. The farms were but one small blight in all of the eastern region. Hohenheim hated the stench of farm animals; he couldn’t stand the overwhelming stink of urine and the way horses trampled over and into their own feces and then trotted around town with mud-and-poop-caked hooves. But something quiet existed in this tiny portion of the eastern region, something comfortable. Perhaps, Hohenheim mused, it was the feather light heat from the sun, or the aroma of fresh cut grass, or the way the graveled roads sounded beneath his shoes. He tipped his head back to watch a lone cloud trail across the sky, covering a sliver of sun for half a second before continuing on its way again.

Hohenheim popped the last of his pork pie into his mouth.

Mr. Hawkeye had been a young man at university the last time Hohenheim saw him. He was studying chemistry and mathematics and Hohenheim remembered being impressed with Mr. Hawkeye’s curious mind. He could string the answer to a problem along a page as easily as Hohenheim could transmute a cenz into a copper ball. They’d met at a library in Central, in one of the stacks at the back where the oldest, most dusty tomes were kept. Hohenheim had reached for a textbook he’d read a dozen times before — he’d known the author of it — at the same time Mr. Hawkeye did. There began an amiable conversation about combustion reactions, in which Hohenheim had a lot of knowledge to share.

It was in this very town, in this very eastern region that Hohenheim had attended Mr. Hawkeye’s wedding. This was how he gleaned from Mrs. Hawkeye what her favorite pastry flavor was, because he’d endeavored to bring her and Mr. Hawkeye a thank you present for their kind invitation to their special occasion — a basket of pastries! Hohenheim was, if anything, rather predictable.

“Honestly, Mr. Hohenheim, you didn’t need to get us a thing.” Mrs. Hawkeye had told him. Her eyes were a striking brown, almost red. Hohenheim had a hard time not staring at them. “But I must admit that the gift comes at the perfect time.”

“A wedding,” Hohenheim said, “is only ever complete with pastries.”

Mrs. Hawkeye nodded, her corn colored hair bouncing around her face. “Yes,” she said, “and so is pregnancy.”

Hohenheim remembered the road to turn onto that would lead him to the Hawkeye house. He remembered because he had a lot of time to think, and all that time spent in his head with hundreds and thousands of souls meant that one of them always knew something that would serve him later.

The house, however, was different than the afterimage he held in his mind. Clutching his bag of pastries close, Hohenheim rounded the road and saw — and stifled a gasp — the Hawkeye home, wilted. Tattered. Frayed and ripped like the easterner’s clothes. Dry, cracking earth lived where flower beds used to, and troughs that used to hold crips, clear water for neighborhood dogs now stank of algae and dead leaves. The house itself tilted slightly, as though the foundation was being sucked into the earth on one side. Weeds encroached on the gravel road, stealing an area that wasn’t theirs. Hohenheim snuffed one out with his foot, knowing well that it would be back later to finish what it started.

The trees still framed the house on all sides, like a half moon. The breeze whistled through their branches, pulling leaves off them. Some landed into the murky troughs of water, and Hohenheim had half a mind to transmute the muck away. He thought better of attempting to manage another man’s land, however, and walked closer to the house.

It was harder to see from a distance, but the once stark white house was now yellowing, the paint chipping away in places. Windows needed cleaning, gunk clogged them up; there was a rocking chair on the front porch that was missing an armrest; the front door was dented in. Hohenheim placed his weight on the first step to the porch cautiously, half expecting it to crumble underneath him. It let out a shrill cry, but it didn’t fall, much to his relief. He knocked once on the door and waited, and almost hoped no one would answer. Because the thought of his mild mannered, kindly acquaintance living in squalor left him fighting off a bout of stomach bile. He knocked again when the first summoned nothing but silence.

Finally, just as Hohenheim was going to turn and leave, the door creaked open. Hohenheim is a tall man and so when the opened door revealed nothing but a view of the drab living room inside the house, he touched his chin to his chest and looked down. A young girl was standing with part of her body shielded by the door, her twiggy fingers curling around its edge. Her eyes bore into Hohenheim’s own, brownish red meeting gold. He recognized those eyes, and his heart plummeted.

“Hello,” he said. The girl sank farther behind the door. “I’m a friend of Mr. Hawkeye. Is that your family name? Are you a young Hawkeye?” The child was visibly unsure of what her response should be, but after a moment she nodded her head. Her blonde hair bounced about her face, a spitting image of her mother.

“Is your dad home?” Hohenheim queried carefully. This girl was like a doe in a forest, watching him wide-eyed, her haunches raised and muscles tensed, ready to run. But she nodded to him again, despite herself.

“Papa,” she called into the house. Her voice was so quiet and steady, so reserved. Hohenheim couldn’t believe that it had come from a girl who could be no more than four years old. He heard rustling from inside the house, and another door squeaking open then closed, and suddenly Mr. Hawkeye was standing at his daughter’s shoulder, opening the door farther so he could fit within its frame.

He made quick work of appraising Hohenheim before his eyebrows raised, and he remembered. “Van Hohenheim,” he said, offering a hand. Hohenheim took it, but the thinness of Mr. Hawkeye’s fingers didn’t escape his notice, and he could feel the indentation of Mr. Hawkeye’s bones in his palms long after their hands had come apart. “Come in, please.”

The air that filled the Hawkeye house was curtained with dust and dirt. The upholstery on the couch was coming apart along the seams, and white stuffing exploded from it like pus from a festering wound. Hohenheim had to look away to keep the mental image from implanting itself in his mind. He left tracks in the dirt-coated floor as he was led through the sparse living room to a dining table settled against the wall of a kitchen. Dishes piled high in a sink circled by flies, and Hohenheim could smell the rot of old food from his place in the entryway. Mr. Hawkeye took a seat at one end of the table, his daughter to his right, and Hohenheim took the seat to her right. He placed the bag of pastries on the table top. The young Hawkeye looked longingly at the paper bag, her eyes telling a story of abject want. Hohenheim unrolled the top of the bag and for one blissful moment the smell of pastries overloaded the fetid stench of the kitchen, and then it was gone.

“This one is for your mother,” Hohenheim said, and caught Mr. Hawkeye’s flinch in his periphery, “but it’s yours since she’s nowhere to be found.” He put a finger to his lips and mouthed, _shhh_. Mrs. Hawkeye’s lookalike managed to take the pastry from Hohenheim gently, though she tore it apart once it was in her hands. She had smeared her faced with blueberry filling in seconds. Hohenheim smiled, and felt a pang of sadness.

“It’s been so long, Mr. Hohenheim,” Mr. Hawkeye began. His hands were intertwined on the table, his thumbs twirling about one another. His eyes darted between his daughter and the wall.

It was odd what five years could do to a man, to his home. The sun shone brightly outside, but inside the Hawkeye house everything lived in varying degrees of grey. Before, when Hohenheim had been here for the Hawkeye wedding, flowers sat on windowsills and bird feeders hung from trees and there was a red carpet in the living room, dusted with white flecks of paint from when Mr. Hawkeye had decided that white should be the color of his walls. The floor was only bare now, and while flower pots still sat on the windowsills their contents were empty, dead, degraded — just like everything else inside the house. Hohenheim shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“It has, yes,” he said. He gave his attention to Mr. Hawkeye’s daughter, who was sucking sugar and blueberry off her skinny fingers. “What’s your name?”

The girl looked to her father, who nodded his approval. “Riza,” she said.

“Oh!” Hohenheim made a noise that was stuck somewhere between surprise and pleasure. “Is that a derivative of Elizabeth?”

Riza dropped her gaze to her lap, and her hands starts to fidget in the same way her father’s did. “My mom’s name was Elizabeth,” she explained quietly. Hohenheim swiveled his face to Mr. Hawkeye, who looked pinched and withdrawn. Light tried to spill in through the window behind him, but grime blocked its path.

“She passed three years ago,” Mr. Hawkeye said by way of an actual explanation, and Hohenheim had the feeling that was all the man could physically say on the matter.

It was quite clear now what had happened. Elizabeth had been the core of the Hawkeye house, providing energy that seeped steadily into the man who took her in his arms on their wedding day. The man who, less than a decade ago, had been too enamored with research and his studies to recognize how dreadfully lonely he truly was - how terribly sad. He changed when he met his wife, and the life she breathed into him had become his single source of happiness, something he was once able to find in books. Now that he’d had that kind of all-encompassing companionship, he was unaware how to live without it. So he took to his books again, to research, to that flame alchemy he’d told Hohenheim about in feverish, hushed whispers, and hoped he could find what he’d had before he’d known the woman he loved. Hohenheim could tell by Mr. Hawkeye’s long face and dark, sunken eyes that he hadn’t.

His daughter — little Riza — sat swinging her legs in a chair two sizes too big for her, in overalls a size too small, with matted hair and fingernails filled with mud. The last of Hohenheim’s jovial mood finally came apart and drifted away.

“She’s beautiful, Berthold,” he said of Riza. And she was, even with neglect plastered all over her bony body. “She looks exactly like her mother.”

Mr. Hawkeye grunted. He bent over the table to lower his face into his hands.

“I can’t look at her most days.” he said.

 _Coward_ , Hohenheim thought. The word came to him unbidden, automatically.

Riza scrubbed a filthy forearm over already wetted eyes.

“I don’t have time for a child, Hohenheim. I’m so close. I’m so close.” His voice muffled in his palms. His shoulders shook. Berthold Hawkeye was a volcano ready to burst, and Riza gripped the underside of her chair, eyes slammed shut, and waited helplessly for the heated impact. Hohenheim’s insides knotted as he wondered how many times Riza has had to bear her father’s liquid hot outbursts. Alone.

Swift as a cat, Hohenheim plucked Riza from her seat.

“We’re going outside,” he said to both her and her father. If Mr. Hawkeye was going to explode, it was better that he do it by himself.

Outside was much better. Outside felt like the real world, a place where Hohenheim could properly breathe. Grass and weeds sprung up from the soft ground and brushed the tops of his hips. Cicadas chirruped in the trees, birds flapped from branch to branch, the humidity framed every inch of Hohenheim’s flesh. He held Riza against his side and he walked, and kept walking. She rested her chin on his shoulder and watched the house disappear behind foliage. She spoke some ten minutes later, right next to his ear: “I can show you my fort.” she said.

Hohenheim placed her gently on the ground, where the grass crept up to her chest. “Where is it?” he said. She took his hand — or rather, two of his sausage-like fingers — and led him approximately three yards forward, then one to the left.

Riza’s fort was splintered pieces of wood and sticks wrapped together in twine. Two logs held the child sized doorway up and open, and the surrounding three trees provided the support for the fort’s short and swiss cheesed walls. Riza dropped Hohenheim’s hand and ducked into the fort. His mind raced: _There could be venomous snakes in there. Spiders, poison ivy. It could fall on her and she’d never be found. The mysterious death of an invisible girl would rouse no one, not even her father._

Just as Hohenheim was worried enough to call out for her, Riza emerged. She had a dented bean can full of crayons in one hand and a small stack of papers in the other. She laid the papers at Hohenheim’s feet, spreading them in an arc. Hohenheim’s breath caught.

“This is me,” Riza said, one long finger pointing to a stick figure girl with blonde hair, “and this is my mom.” She settled onto her knees then and looked up into Hohenheim’s eyes with all the graceful innocence of a four-year-old. “I don’t know what she looks like so I had to guess.”

This figure, rimmed in a pink outline, stood apart from the caricature of Riza. She was on a hill, the sun setting in orange and yellow behind her, a large rounded stone drawn near her right leg.

Riza’s face soured, and she said, “This one is my papa.”

Berthold Hawkeye was standing at his daughter’s shoulder, hunched and looming like a storm cloud. His eyes were a dull grey and in his hand was what Hohenheim suspected was a textbook. He leaned over Riza’s head like he planned to kiss it, but Hohenheim knew that wasn’t what the girl meant to portray. She felt pressed down upon by her father, like he was a weight she couldn’t shake. A four-year-old!

Hohenheim dropped down into a squat in front of Riza. “Miss Riza,” he said, and she’d been looking at her drawing but turned her face to him now, “your fort is incredible. I only wish you had better materials to work with. So, would you be so kind as to allow me to transmute it for you?”

Riza seemed to consider, and then she acquiesced.

“I promise I won’t ruin it,” Hohenheim assured her, giving her a wink. He went inside himself, asked the souls coursing through him to grant him this one favor, to forgive him for using their energy, and then he lifted a hand and the woods lit up in red. He used the nearby trees, thanking them for their sacrifice all the while, and twisted them into a canopy above the fort. He found the stones in the ground and ripped them from their resting places, forcing them together to create a sturdy base from which the fort could sit. Riza stood and marveled, spinning in small circles as red danced over her bright, young face. Hohenheim finished by thickening the fort’s walls, and reinforcing them with clay. He hoped the canopy would provide good cover from the rain, but instructed Riza never to be in the fort during a storm. She looked almost too stunned to reply.

“Papa’s is blue,” she said, talking about the alchemic reaction, “and yours is red.”

“Mine comes from some place else,” Hohenheim said plainly.

Riza stopped spinning and looked at him. Her sweet face broke into a smile. “I like yours better.”

* * *

 

Hohenheim reluctantly returned Riza to the house. He would have preferred to take her far, far away, but where would she go? An orphanage? A group home? Would she travel the world with him? He felt immense guilt as he deposited her into a kitchen chair and gave her the last pork pastry. She sat and ate and hummed and by herself. Hohenheim found Mr. Hawkeye in the basement, poring over books by candlelight. Hohenheim felt a surge of ferocious rage, of intense disappointment. He worried that he might bring the roof down on his old acquaintance, but the sound of Riza’s humming stilled his fury. It left him in one long sigh.

“It’s not my place,” Hohenheim said, and Mr. Hawkeye started in his chair, “but that girl of yours deserves care, Berthold Hawkeye. And if you can’t give it to her, then I will find someone who can.”

Mr. Hawkeye looked as though he were going to turn around, but didn’t. He began writing in the margins of some old text, and then said, “You’re right, Van Hohenheim. It isn’t your place. Have Riza show you out.”

 


	2. on the other side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i don't mean to keep writing such profound one-shots sajbdkfhdgv

**II.**

**on the other side**

The rain bit at Hohenheim’s exposed neck. He tried to cover his sensitive skin with the collar of his coat, but that only made the rain beat against his hand instead. So he relented, and kept his pace on a dark, cobble stoned road. Light from street lamps bounced around against the raindrops, echoing off the water’s surface. Hohenheim would think the storm would diffuse the lamp light, but it fought the deluge valiantly. 

Hohenheim wasn’t sure he liked Central on the best of days, and today was certainly not the best of days. He muttered curses upon the city under his breath. Partly because it truly was a city festering with the worst of them — filthy politicians and swindlers which were, in Hohenheim’s mind, sometimes the same thing. But also because he couldn’t use his alchemy here, not in the heart of Amestris where alchemists flocked like birds to telephone wires. Some alchemist would surely notice if electric red light engulfed the yellow street light, and Hohenheim would likely be questioned. Police stations would provide respite from the rain, however…

Hohenheim shook his soaking head. Now he was considering getting arrested for the possibility of shelter! Central really was a terrible, terrible place; it turned Hohenheim into a desperate man. 

Shelter did eventually present itself on its own. It came in the form of an old bar. Hohenheim couldn’t make out what the neon sign at its front said, but he surveyed the way two people stumbled out the doors and into the rain, hooking arms together to stay upright. He endeavored to keep going long enough to get inside the bar, and he did, and the tension left him the moment he stepped into the — heated! — establishment. He stood on a mat at the front door for a moment, suddenly needing very badly to catch his breath, as though the rain stole it right from his lungs. He bent forward, hands on knees, and gulped in air like a fish. Finally, when he’d caught his breath, he lifted his gaze.

The bar was suffused with color from various lights along the ceiling’s trim. Even with the grey smoke of cigarettes creating a haze at eye level, Hohenheim could make out paintings along the walls. Some were lopsided, other were perfectly level, but they each depicted a scene from a different region: There, a sunset in Ishval, and to the right of that, the Central library, and to the left was the Emperor’s palace in Xing. Hohenheim tilted his head at that one, questioning, because the artist had painted the pillars green instead of their trademark red. 

“You!” someone barked. Hohenheim’s attention was torn from the painting and he swiveled his head to face where the sound had come from. “Quit dripping all over my floor. Buy something or leave, this isn’t a hotel.”

Across the bar, a heavyset woman stood behind a counter, twirling a bottle of bourbon in her hand. She had a severe face, creased with wrinkles, and a cigarette pinched tightly between her teeth. Deep black hair lay in a low ponytail over her shoulder, and there on her chin was a mole. Hohenheim straightened and made his way toward her, trying desperately not to cough as cigarette smoke assaulted his virgin lungs. Everyone was so attached to those things these days, but Hohenheim couldn’t find the appeal. He sat his wet self on a stool directly in front of the barkeep, his pants squelching beneath him.

“I’ll have something warm, please.” he said. The woman looked close to laughing.

“Unless it’s escaped your notice, sir, this is a bar.” 

The woman could say so all she wanted, but Hohenheim had sniffed out the secret stink of this place rather easily. There were booths partitioned by curtains, very few tables for people to sit at, and women darted into and out of a back room. They emerged from the curtains seeming flustered, their hair sticking out in strange places, falling from their clips and braids. Some of them were still righting the hems of their dresses as they went. The woman narrowed her eyes and regarded Hohenheim with a sudden surge of suspicion. 

“This is not a brothel,” she said, “if that’s what you’re thinking. I can see the gears turning in that golden head of yours, and I don’t quite appreciate my bar being scrutinized in such a way.” She took the cigarette from between her teeth and pointed it at him, the smoldering end coming within inches of his wet chest. Hohenheim held his hands up in surrender.

“All right, okay,” he said, grinning. He hadn’t thought this was a brothel, though he figured she’d be even more cross with him if she knew he was sure it was a place to gather intel. Information. Beautiful women could charm a lot out of incapacitated men. Hohenheim only wondered briefly what this woman could want with information, what connections she had and with whom — but that was beyond the scope of his current predicament. “I’ll take a hot toddy, please.” 

She seemed pacified by his order. She replaced the cigarette in her mouth and turned toward the drinks. The brandy she chose was an excellent year, perfectly ripe. His drink was warming his hands in minutes, the heat made his fingers tingle. He had started to lose feeling in their tips. He nursed his drink quietly for a beat or two, letting the warmth pool in his chilly gut, and then inquired: “Who may I thank for this delicious slice of salvation on such a horrendous night?”

The woman, who had been fussing over dishes in a sink, faced him. She looked at him a long time, appraising, probably weighing whether or not she should tell him her real name in case he did believe this to be a brothel and would send the police after her. “Madame Christmas,” she said at last.

“Madame Christmas,” Hohenheim repeated, testing the odd name on his tongue. Though he didn’t think he was really one to judge. “Van Hohenheim,” he said, reaching his hand across the bar top. She shook it, then drew her hand away to wipe the dampness away on a towel. “Sorry about that. The rain is torrential out there.”

“That’s spring for you,” Madame Christmas said. She started her task at the sink again. Beside her, women came in and out of a door. The sign on it read, STAFF ONLY.

“So spring in Central is always a beast, is it?” Hohenheim lacked the ability to truly enjoy small talk. He’d been alive for so long that small talk was most of the talk he ever had, so he much preferred actual conversation. The madame didn’t seem one to enjoy either, though, so he treaded lightly — like walking on a bed of eggshells. 

Madame Christmas blew air out her nose. Smoke went out with it. “Just the past few years. Seems wrong for it to rain so much in a city and not enough out east, where the farming’s good. I know those farmers certainly struggle during the dry boughts, and I hear they’re in one right now. It would be nice if those alchemists in Central could find a way to ship this rain off to where people really need it. You know, be useful for once.”

Ah, a twinge of contempt in her tone. Hohenheim sipped his hot toddy.

The door to the madame’s right opened again, only this time a young boy came out in place of a young woman. He donned pink pajamas decorated by yellow ducks, and had a fist pressed to one of his eyes. The other eye, the one Hohenheim could see, was wet. Madame Christmas rerouted her attention to the child immediately. 

“What did you do, my boy?” she said, taking the boy’s hand away to inspect his eye. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were red, irritated. He looked away from her and then back again. 

“I, um…” he fumbled with the right thing to say. The truth was dangling on his tongue, and he could either let it fall or reel it in. “I tried to transmute my bedpost into something cooler looking, but it splintered and I think some of it got in my eye.” He looked at Madame Christmas sheepishly, like he expected her sharp tongue to dart out and lash him, but she instead smoothed his dark hair across his forehead. 

“Wash that eye out good in the sink,” she sighed, “and I’ll fetch you an ice pack.” She threw a look at Hohenheim, like maybe he’d understand the plight of parenthood, but he could only smile wanly at her. He didn’t. His closest brush with parenthood was Mr. Hawkeye, and he wouldn’t add that man’s name to the nominees list for Father of the Year. 

Water trailed down the boy’s face to blot his pink pajamas. His eyes screwed shut, he called, “Aunt Chris? I washed my eye.” The madame knelt and gingerly patted a cool pack of ice to the boy’s eyes. He hissed at first, leaning away from the sensation, but it didn’t take long before he gave in. And each time the cold came and went, his eye looked less puffy, less angry. “That feels better,” he breathed. 

“You should have been sleeping, Roy, not transmuting the furniture I work every day to afford.” 

Roy’s bottom lip jutted out. “I’m sorry, Aunt Chris,” he said. “Truth be told, I was trying to build a fort.” 

Madame Christmas swatted Roy’s arm with the towel she had in her other hand. “Roy!”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I’m not good enough yet anyway, especially because you won’t get me a tutor.”

The madame’s shoulders sagged with the weight of what Hohenheim could only assume was an old, tired argument. She stood swiftly and dropped the ice pack into the sink. It landed hard with a vicious  _ clank _ . “You’re too young, my boy, and I won’t have this discussion with you when it’s well past your bedtime. And with a customer watching.” She swept her hand in Hohenheim’s direction, like she’d just remembered he was there. The boy’s dark, almond-shaped eyes pinned themselves to Hohenheim. He glimpsed a fire deep in those irises. 

“Fine,” he grumbled. He hugged the madame quickly around her midsection, and then left. 

“The boy is seven,” Madame Christmas said to no one in particular, “and he speaks like  _ that _ — and he wants an alchemy tutor. If you ask me that science is nothing but trouble.”

Hohenheim smiled behind the rim of his glass. “But scientists can be many things. If he studied science and alchemy, he may solidify a worthwhile and lucrative future.”

The madame looked at him. Her eyes were as wild as a horse’s. “He’s seven,” she said again for emphasis. 

“And bright, if you ask me,” Hohenheim noted. The madame couldn’t protest. She was well aware. “You could always send him some place later, it doesn’t have to be now. I happen to know a man. He’s a talented alchemist, and I think he and his home could use a a pair of fresh hands.”

Mr. Hawkeye didn’t deserve a pupil — but Riza did, and who would Hohenheim be if he didn’t try?

He scribbled an address on a napkin when Madame Christmas didn’t respond, only stared. He slid it across the table to her. “Berthold Hawkeye,” he said. And then he finished his hot toddy, sensing that he’d managed to overstay his welcome. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was removed from my father’s custody when i was 11 years old. i wasn’t building forts in the woods outside my house, but everything around me was falling apart — dirty, unhinged, peeling. i guess i’ve always found comfort in Riza, knowing she was neglected too. no need to comment on this little note, i only wanted to provide a bit of context! i hope you all enjoyed this story, because it’s meant to be a happy one. oftentimes it takes a community to care for a child in need, and in doing so they may save that child’s life. i think Riza must have gotten that support from somewhere, like i did.


End file.
